The problem with this episode is really more of a technical one. Destroying the ecosystem of an M-class world seems like an awfully high price to pay just to heat a couple of hundred thousand homes. For that sort of sacrifice you'd expect much greater returns, perhaps even enough energy to power half of Bajor.

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That may be all it's used for now, with an eye on expansion?

Honestly, I'm surprised that the Bajorans even considered the process. Regardless of the waste, does nobody remember what happened to Praxis?

Here we have one of the most important episodes of the first season, it introduces the baseball. That's about it, everything else can be forgotten about.

You know, I once read that the story of Rumplestiltskin was originally a parable about the dangers of pre-marital rolls in the hay, with the name Rumplestiltskin being an allusion to a penis. I don't know if that's true, but I want it to be true, partly because that means that O'Brien's imagination conjured up a walking, talking willy. It certainly puts a new perspective on his relationship with Bashir over the years. And it's strange because I still find the notion of Star Trek doing an episode containing a short, warted penis to be preferable to one containing a leprechaun. Thank you Colm Meaney, it's because of you that DS9 is the only 24th century Trek that doesn't insult the Irish. Also, you shouted "bollocks" once, that was good.

I guess I have to address the episode, don't I? It's a high-concept sci-fi episode that doesn't quite work as a DS9 episode (especially coming off the back of Progress) and it descends into technobabble hell at the end. Actually, the ending could be viewed as a comment on how Starfleet officers love to imagine technobabble problems for themselves, but there's still too much of the 'babble for my liking. The aliens at the centre of the story just don't fit into the series' overall arc, and you have to wonder why they choose such a roundabout way of making first contact rather than just saying hello.

The Bashir/fantasy-Jadzia bits were pretty fun, and indicates that his attraction to Jadzia is based on her physical appearance, which undercuts the claims later in the series that he had actually been in love with her. There's some good Odo/Quark moments too. But episodes like this are not the reason why I bought the ridiculously expensive DVDs (thankfully, at 48% off RRP).

The Bashir/fantasy-Jadzia bits were pretty fun, and indicates that his attraction to Jadzia is based on her physical appearance, which undercuts the claims later in the series that he had actually been in love with her.

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I suppose one could argue that at first he was only attracted to her based on her looks but that over time he actually fell in love with her. Isn't that how most infatuations that end up in love start out?

Hmph. Trek DVDs were damn pricy a handful of years ago. I remember seeing them for about $130 at one point. I could get two seasons of just about any other show for that price. Fortunately in my area the places that sell them have dropped them to about fifty bucks a pop, so they're comparatively a bargain. Of course, I still only have all three TOS, two TNG (1 and 4) and four DS9 (1, 3, 6, and 7), rather than a complete set, but it's something.

I got my DVDs back in the summer of 2004, when they were usually on sale for €120 per season! But Amazon had a "Cheap Space Nine" sale where the DVDs were 48% off (such a random number that it stuck in my mind) and I snapped them up. Back then, ~€60 for a 26 episode season wasn't bad, and they came in plastic cases that are much fancier than the slimline cases you get today.

I suppose one could argue that at first he was only attracted to her based on her looks but that over time he actually fell in love with her. Isn't that how most infatuations that end up in love start out?

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But we don't hear much about his attraction to Jadzia after season 1, do we? I suppose it's possible that he was in love with her after this point and didn't realise it until it was triggered years later, but given his infatuation with her during season 1, it seems like a stretch to think that he loved her but didn't know.

Back then, ~€60 for a 26 episode season wasn't bad, and they came in plastic cases that are much fancier than the slimline cases you get today.

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I don't know about the R2 cases, but the R1 cases are crap. I really wish that they came in the six-discs-in-one-normal-size-Amaray that Fox and others have been using for the last couple of years (at least in R1).

I paid one-hundred dollars for each season of DS9 when it was first released on DVD. DS9 is the only series that I would be willing to invest that much money in. Though I have to admit that I was at first somewhat reluctant to shell out that kind of cash for season one, not only because of the quality of the episodes but because I had already bought the expensive VCR tapes of season one back in the nineties. (Twenty-four bucks for two episodes through Columbia House if I remember correctly. I cancelled my subscription at the start of season two because it would have been ridiculously expensive to get all seven seasons on tape. As pricey as the DVDs were, they were still a bargain compared to the old VCR tapes.)

But we don't hear much about his attraction to Jadzia after season 1, do we? I suppose it's possible that he was in love with her after this point and didn't realise it until it was triggered years later, but given his infatuation with her during season 1, it seems like a stretch to think that he loved her but didn't know.

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I've always taken it to be that at this early stage he was just infatuated with her based on her appearance, like you said. However, after he backed off a little and actually started to get to know her, he began to fall in love with her.

Given that I'm no ladies man, I might be talking out of my ass, but I've always thought that relationships start with an infatuation like we see with Bashir but then develop into something deeper.

I remember being infatuated with an old friend, and it took me a while to realise I was in love with him. Like, three years! Though I suppose I realised eventually.

I really hate If Wishes Were Horses, which is yet another terrible season one episode. Another technobabble plot, and more dull aliens. Not typical of what makes DS9 good, but we all know this.

As for DVDs, I remember paying £60 a boxset for TOS, TNG and DS9, which I thought was a decent price at the time. They were down from £85, and I got discount where I worked. The VHS episodes used to be £13 for just two episodes, so it seemed like an amazing deal. Looking back it's an obsene price compared to other TV releases over the years!

With VOY and ENT I just bought the second-release boxsets that were about £12-£14 for a season. Which is only fair - no way I was paying £60 a season for either of those two.

I don't know about the R2 cases, but the R1 cases are crap. I really wish that they came in the six-discs-in-one-normal-size-Amaray that Fox and others have been using for the last couple of years (at least in R1).

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I've heard the R1 cases were terrible, but the original R2 cases weren't so bad, they came in fairly robust clamshell cases. The hinge on my season 5 case broke early on, and it's still fairly fragile after gluing it back together, but overall they've held up well compared to my cardboard-cased DVD sets.

Given that I'm no ladies man, I might be talking out of my ass, but I've always thought that relationships start with an infatuation like we see with Bashir but then develop into something deeper.

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Well, I am a ladies' man, I get more pussy than I know what to do with (I may be exaggerating ever so slightly), but I think that if you start out infatuated with someone then you're more likely to realise that you love them. I can buy into him realising, out of the blue, that he's in love with his friend after she gets involved with someone else, because I... have a friend that went through a similar experience (it wasn't me, I'm too much up to my neck in vagina to have time for love). But Seven of Five says otherwise, so I'll bow to his superior knowledge as he's definitively not a ladies' man.

The Forsaken (**½)

It's funny, before watching this episode I had watched an episode of Frasier guest-staring René Auberjonois where he played the mostly serious role of a psychiatrist attempting to help Frasier through a crisis moment, while in this episode of DS9 he plays a largely comic role in attempting to stay away from Lwaxana. Of course, he goes all serious at the end as he's forced to open up to her and reveal his liquid state, which is a nice little moment. I'm not a big fan of Lwaxana, few are, but I don't dislike her either, and this is one of her better appearances on Star Trek. She gets to be annoying in a knowing way, and she gets her serious moment at the end to make us go "awwww".

The main plot, if that's what it is, actually detracts from the episode. I've managed to acquire the original script for the episode before it was sent to the science advisor, and here's what it looks like:

O'BRIEN: There's a <tech> in the <tech> <tech>. We're losing control of <tech>!JADZIA: Try <tech>ing the <tech> to see if you can <tech> the <tech> <tech> <tech>.O'BRIEN: It's not working, the <tech> is <tech>ing the <tech>.JADZIA: There's a <tech> building up in the <tech>. If we don't <tech> it soon, it will <tech> the <tech>.THE SISKO: I was a tenured professor. What am I doing here?

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To use a strained analogy to explain this plot: Some probe shows up, but it's not a real probe, it's actually a puppy that looks like a probe. Or something. The puppy probe shits all over essential station functions, and when O'Brien tries to whack its nose with a technobabble newspaper, the puppy gets scared as pisses all over the rug. O'Brien then comes up with a better plan and throws a computerised ball into the virtual equivalent of the small cupboard under the stairs, and when the puppy runs excitedly to get it, he locks it in there. Now the puppy is trapped for all eternity. Yay!

The final plot involves Bashir acting as tour guide for some un-ambassadorial ambassadors. If these are the guys that the Federation sent to negotiate with the Dominion, it's no wonder the Dominion were so intent on genocide. Sisko is a better ambassador than these folks, and his favourite way of starting a conversation is punching people. This plot is middling, the ambassadors are stupid and the resolution is somewhat pat, but I do share in Sisko's perverse pleasure in forcing Bashir to deal with these people. The guy's obnoxious behaviour has been a pain for everybody else all season, so it's nice to see the shoe on the other foot.

The final plot involves Bashir acting as tour guide for some un-ambassadorial ambassadors. If these are the guys that the Federation sent to negotiate with the Dominion, it's no wonder the Dominion were so intent on genocide. Sisko is a better ambassador than these folks, and his favourite way of starting a conversation is punching people. This plot is middling, the ambassadors are stupid and the resolution is somewhat pat

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I suppose if you were being very kind and trying to make something meaningful of the ambassadors' conduct, you could say it plays into the idea that the 24th century Federation is somewhat complacent and overly sure of itself. Its member worlds are so used to being comfortable and unthreatened that they're not even taking their diplomacy too seriously anymore, at least when it's not the Starfleet edge-of-explored-space new contact diplomacy? So the primary concern of the visiting diplomats is whether they get fancy quarters or not, as opposed to actually learning about the Bajoran situation? Do Vulcan, Bolarus, Arbazan and Betazed even realize how important the station could potentially be? From their viewpoint, does it really matter what's going on at Bajor? A blindness that raises a few red flags about where the Federation might be headed, and which validates some of the points raised by Kira and other Bajorans?

Obviously the real explanation is the foolish Trek trope of ambassadors being asses, but maybe we could attempt to see this as feeding into the themes the later seasons begin exploring? If we were inclined to be kind and rather self-delusional.

Hey, I prefer to play around with the weak points and try to make them work as part of DS9 if at all possible.

Just to backtrack for a moment, I'd like to know precisely why a leprechaun would have been so much worse than Rumplestiltskin. I've got my own ideas why (given what we got in "Fair Haven" and "Spirit Folk") But I'd be curious to hear more.

I'm willing to accept that a leprechaun would have pushed us into new levels of awful, but Rumplestiltskin himself was pretty bad.

The final plot involves Bashir acting as tour guide for some un-ambassadorial ambassadors. If these are the guys that the Federation sent to negotiate with the Dominion, it's no wonder the Dominion were so intent on genocide. Sisko is a better ambassador than these folks, and his favourite way of starting a conversation is punching people. This plot is middling, the ambassadors are stupid and the resolution is somewhat pat

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I suppose if you were being very kind and trying to make something meaningful of the ambassadors' conduct, you could say it plays into the idea that the 24th century Federation is somewhat complacent and overly sure of itself. Its member worlds are so used to being comfortable and unthreatened that they're not even taking their diplomacy too seriously anymore, at least when it's not the Starfleet edge-of-explored-space new contact diplomacy? So the primary concern of the visiting diplomats is whether they get fancy quarters or not, as opposed to actually learning about the Bajoran situation? Do Vulcan, Bolarus, Arbazan and Betazed even realize how important the station could potentially be? From their viewpoint, does it really matter what's going on at Bajor? A blindness that raises a few red flags about where the Federation might be headed, and which validates some of the points raised by Kira and other Bajorans?

Obviously the real explanation is the foolish Trek trope of ambassadors being asses, but maybe we could attempt to see this as feeding into the themes the later seasons begin exploring? If we were inclined to be kind and rather self-delusional.

Hey, I prefer to play around with the weak points and try to make them work as part of DS9 if at all possible.

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I choose to accept this as the reason for all the ambassadorial buffoonery we see across Trek. It makes for a really nice explanation for why these supposed diplomats do such a lousy job of diplomacy.